Such a tape drive is, of course, well known. With the desire to make tape cartridges smaller and to record data on the cartridges with increasing volumetric density, tapes have become narrower and thinner and the areal data density on the tape has become higher. With the increased areal data density, in order to provide proper writing to and reading from the tape, great precision is required in the construction of the transducer, in the tracking system and in the system for moving the tape past the transducer. Moreover, great care needs to be take by the drive in the handling of the thin, narrow and therefore delicate tape. This invention arose as a result of a concern about the feeding of the tape between the drive and the cartridge housing. If the tape is not aligned properly in its widthwise direction, wear can occur at one or both edges of the tape, caused by rubbing of the tape edge against a flange of the tape guide or the reel inside the cartridge. Correct positioning of the tape guide in the widthwise direction of the tape is important, and experiments on one type of modern DAT have shown that there is a tolerance of about .+-.60 .mu.m on the tape guide position, outside of which tape edge wear can be a serious problem. In order to deal with this problem, in one current model of Hewlett-Packard tape drive the tape guide mounting portion employs a screw-threaded adjuster which can be used to adjust the position of the guide portion of the tape guide in the widthwise direction of the tape. Because of other manufacturing tolerances, it is necessary to adjust each tape drive separately as part of the manufacturing process, with a resultant increase in manufacturing time and cost.